


Expected and Unexpected

by flibbertygigget



Series: An Unexpected Universe [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-06-23 11:01:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15604848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flibbertygigget/pseuds/flibbertygigget
Summary: Minerva jumped slightly when her fire finally flared green. “Little late today, aren’t we, Severus?” she said. Her eyebrows flew upward when he didn’t even give her a glare. He just flopped down in the seat across from her.“You will notbelievethe week I’ve had,” Severus said.Or: Severus finally gets some advice.





	Expected and Unexpected

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Français available: [Attendu et inattendu](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17248040) by [Matteic_FR (Matteic)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Matteic/pseuds/Matteic_FR)



Minerva McGonagall checked her watch, then her clock, then her watch again. It was extremely unusual for her youngest colleague to be late to tea. What had started as simply a monthly duty in her capacity as Deputy Headmistress had become a near-weekly meeting between friends. She snorted to herself at the thought. If someone had told her ten years ago that the stringy, unpleasant Slytherin boy would one day become one of her closest friends, she would have laughed in their face. But Severus Snape, though still undeniably a Slytherin, had been transfigured over the intervening decade.

Her smile faded slightly as she sighed. It had been the war that had done it. It was a positive change in Severus, to be sure, but it was still change created by the horrors of You-Know-Who, and she could never be glib about something as horrible as that.

Minerva jumped slightly when her fire finally flared green. Severus stepped out, brushing the ash from his Muggle clothing with a kind of fumbling half-grace. He tossed a red tartan tin of biscuits on the table with his usual playful smirk, but she couldn’t help but notice how distracted he seemed.

“Little late today, aren’t we, Severus?” she said. Her eyebrows flew upward when he didn’t even give her a glare. He just flopped down in the seat across from her and eyed the chocolate newts hopefully. She rolled her eyes and pushed the plate toward him. “Well?”

“You will not _believe_ the week I’ve had,” he said. He bit the head off his newt savagely.

“What, have you exploded more cauldrons than a first-year Potions class?”

“Worse,” he said. “I’ve had to deal with two children during my bloody break and an ass-load of relationship problems to boot.” Minerva smiled.

“Who’s the lucky woman?” Severus’s jaw dropped in horror.

“Don’t even joke about that, Minerva. The romantic entanglements in question have nothing to do with _me._ ” The way he spat the words was what convinced Minerva that he was actually telling the truth. “You are acquainted, I believe, with Lily E-Potter’s older sister.”

“I spent a day on her garden wall,” Minerva said dryly. Severus snorted. “The whole family seemed to be a thoroughly unpleasant lot of Muggles.”

“An accurate assessment,” he said in a rather impolitic tone of voice. “Well, four days ago Petunia, her son, and the Potter boy showed up on my doorstep at five o-bloody-clock in the morning. Apparently her husband decided that he was going to put Potter in a cupboard.” Minerva blinked.

“A _cupboard_?” she said, not quite believing that she had heard him correctly. “As, what, a punishment?”

“No, that would be somewhat reasonable. Vernon Dursley wanted to have Potter use it as a bedroom.” Minerva opened and closed her mouth several times before sipping her tea, trying to parse out her thoughts on those disturbing sentences. Severus followed suit, the hand holding his teacup visibly trembling.

Minerva’s first instinct was to tell the boy that, no, throwing a child in a cupboard for any amount of time was barbaric and _not_ a reasonable form of punishment. She had found out quite a bit about Severus’s childhood over the first year or so of his employment, and she swung wildly between being horrified at what he deemed acceptable methods of classroom management and being horrified at the experiences that had led him to those conclusions. Luckily for her, he had been amiable enough to course correction, though she never had been able to convince him that giving points was as powerful a tool as taking them away. Even thinking about some of those conversations made her uncomfortable, aware as she was that an abused student had remained unnoticed for years under her watch.

At the same time, Severus seemed to have at least somewhat intellectualized that putting a child in a cupboard, even temporarily, was a certain degree of unacceptable, and the idea of Harry Potter being forced to _live_ there obviously horrified him. Correcting him now, at least in the manner she was tempted to, would only put him on the defensive, and Severus on the defensive was a bloody pain to deal with. If she was particularly unlucky, he would storm out, and she would be stuck guessing about Harry’s situation for however long it took for him to stop acting like she didn’t exist.

“And how did you get involved in all this?” she asked instead.

“I told you, I had Petunia bloody Evans and two five-year-olds show up on my doorstep at five in the morning,” Severus snapped. The two events suddenly connected in Minerva’s mind, and she stared at him in shock.

“You mean that Muggle, that horrible Muggle actually _left_? But she seemed so…” Minerva struggled for a moment to find the right word, “dependent.” Severus snorted.

“Believe me, if you had known Petunia when she was younger, you would never think of her as dependent on anyone. She was willing to alienate herself from her entire family in order to reject magic. I never thought I would ever be glad for her bullheadedness.” Minerva smiled into her teacup.

“It sounds as though you admire her.” Severus shrugged.

“She was willing to ask for help from someone she hates when the arsehole she calls a husband went too far. I know how much that takes.” Minerva must have looked like she understood what he was obliquely referring to a little too well, because Severus glared at her before pressing onward. “And she seems to be sticking with her decision as well. She asked if I could put them up a while longer while she gets the separation process going and gets back on her feet. She may have buggered up the rest of it, but she fixes her mistakes, I’ll give her that much.”

“Hmm,” Minerva said.

“Oh, don’t ‘hmm’ me. Petunia’s still as vile and spiteful a creature as ever.” Minerva knew that she looked less than convinced and more than amused, which may have been why Severus seemed to change tacks quite suddenly. “Actually, Minerva, I came to ask you for your advice, seeing as I suddenly have two five-year-olds I need to…” He trailed off.

“Parent?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Even if I had any reason to consider myself – I’m unfit. Completely unfit. Regardless, they’re still somewhat under my… supervision, and I have no experience with children of that age."

“You know I haven’t either.”

“Still, you’re more…” He waved his hand lazily. “I can’t exactly take points when their behavior is unacceptable. I’m not their Head of House.”

“Though still _in loco parentis_.”

“Don’t even joke about it, Minerva. I am not their bloody father and that’s final.”

“From what you’ve told me, they’d be damn lucky to not have you acting like the Dursley boy’s father.”

“And who the hell should I emulate? My father? The Dark Lord? _Dumbledore_?” Minerva winced slightly. It was always uncomfortable to realize how different her and Severus’s experiences with Albus had been and how fallible the older wizard really was. She almost winced again. Fallible was not the phrase Severus would have used to describe him. “That entire family is a fucking mess, Minerva. Potter’s convinced that the slightest harsh word could instigate a punishment for his ‘freaky’ accidental magic, and Dursley, I don’t even know what’s wrong with Dursley. Spoiled beyond all belief, probably.” He ran a hand down his face. “You’re acting like I’m supposed to just step in, but I’m the last person who should be getting involved. Hell, I can’t even go 24 hours without losing my temper.”

“What happened?’ Minerva asked, more alarmed than she would like to admit.

“Dursley happened,” he said. “He was complaining about – well, to be honest I’m not quite sure what started it. I _think_ he was upset that Potter started eating before him, but that quickly devolved into him yelling about being given too little on his plate, even after I reassured him that there was more available if he needed it. He ended up throwing his plate at the wall and hitting me. I know that some kind of punishment was in order, but I still lost my temper.”

“Ah,” said Minerva. She had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing. Oh, sure, she had no doubt that Severus truly _had_ lost his temper, but if anything truly awful had happened he wouldn’t be focusing on that part of it but on the damage he’d done.

And, really, the idea of Severus _not_ losing his temper at that specific reason for a childish fit was absolutely ridiculous. After all, this was the boy who had seemed more upset about the waste of food than the multiple minor injuries after his first time breaking up one of Hogwarts’s semi-regular inter-House food fights. She knew it wasn’t kind to laugh, but it had been difficult when he’d been yelling at the students and assigning detention with the remains of a giant jelly still in his hair. And that had been his reaction to them just wasting _dessert_.

“Ah,” she said again when she had gotten control of her potential laughter. “I suppose you set the boy straight?”

“I corrected him physically.” Severus sounded absolutely miserable.

“You belted him?”

“What? No!” This time she couldn’t stop her snort of laughter. “This isn’t funny! I grabbed his wrists hard, too hard.”

“And then?”

“Stop smiling! I needed time to – so I sent him up to one of the bedrooms. After I’d, well, you know, I took him up the apparently too-small serving of spaghetti and laid down some ground rules.”

“You didn’t lay a hand on the boy?” Severus nodded. “You let him have his lunch, even after all that?” Severus bristled.

“I’m not some kind of monster!” he snapped. Minerva smirked at him.

“Well, then, I don’t see why you’re castigating yourself. In fact, I’d say you were more than gentle with the boy, considering the circumstances.”

“But I-“

“Severus Snape, do you think that even the best parents don’t lose their tempers on occasion?” Severus hesitated, and Minerva snorted. “Perhaps I should put it this way. How many times do you think I wanted to strangle my Gryffindor/Slytherin class your fifth year?” Severus had the grace to look pained.

“About as often as I want to strangle the students in general?”

“Exactly. And you know very well that I have a temper.” Severus smirked. “So what keeps us from murdering the little blighters when they decide to order a side of reckless endangerment with their schooling?”

“The rules,” Severus said, and then he muttered under his breath, “Why does it seem to all be coming back to rules?”

“Because the rules are there to moderate us, to ensure that we aren’t letting our first instincts control us.”

“So I should treat them like they’re students?” Severus said hopefully. Minerva shook her head, smiling slightly.

“Of course not,” she said. “For one thing, they are five, not eleven. For another, I expect you’ll have far more than a typical student-teacher relationship with them.”

“But my instincts…” Severus looked down at his hands. “I’m not a fit parental figure.”

“You’re better than you give yourself credit for,” Minerva said. “Just do your best and leave the rest to sort itself out. You’ll already be better than those damn Muggles if you do so.” A faint but genuine smile tugged at the corners of Severus’s mouth.

“I suppose there is that,” he conceded.


End file.
